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Planet of the Apes (TV Series)
Cast Starring * Ron Harper as Alan Virdon * James Naughton as Peter Burke * Roddy McDowall as Galen Also starring * Booth Colman as Councillor Zaius * Mark Lenard as Chief of Security Urko Production Crew * Producer ... Stan Hough * Executive Producer ... Herbert Hirschman * Executive Story Consultant ... Howard Dimsdale * Story Consultants ... Joe Ruby, Ken Spears * Production Supervisor ... Mark Evans * Unit Production Manager ... Richard Glassman * Director of Photography ... Gerald Perry Finnerman, A.S.C. * Art Director ... Arch Bacon * Make Up ... Dan Striepeke * Set Decorator ... Stuart A. Reiss * Casting ... Marvin Paige * Theme Music ... Lalo Schifrin * Music Supervision ... Lionel Newman * Post Production Supervisor ... Joseph Silver, A.C.E. * Developed for TV by Anthony Wilson Episodes (Aired) * Escape from Tomorrow * The Gladiators * The Trap * The Good Seeds * The Legacy * Tomorrow's Tide * The Surgeon * The Deception * The Horse Race * The Interrogation * The Tyrant * The Cure * The Liberator * Up Above the World So High Episodes (Unfilmed) * Episode One * Episode Two * A Fallen God * Hostage * The Trek * Freedom Road * The Mine * The Trial Spin-Off Media Stories * Power Records Planet of the Apes "Little LP's", 1974 :* Battle of Two Worlds :* Mounatin of The Delphi :* Dawn of The Tree People :* Volcano * Brown & Watson 'Planet of the Apes' Annual, 1975 :* Journey Into Terror :* A Promise Kept :* When The Earth Shakes :* The Scavangers :* Swamped * Brown & Watson 'Planet of the Apes' Annual, 1976 :* Galen's Guerrillas :* From Out Of The Past :* Pit Of Doom :* The Captive :* Raiding Party :* Ship Of Fools :* When The Ghosts Walk :* The Marksman * Brown & Watson 'Planet of the Apes' Annual, 1977 :* Blow For Blow :* The Prophet :* Breakout :* The Arsenal :* Power Play :* From Out Of The Sky :* Flight From Terror * El Planeta de Los Simios Argentinian Comics, 1977 :* The Wandering Jew :* New Life... On The Old Planet :* Depth :* The Beach Of Time :* Ultrasonic :* The Gods Of The Stars :* The Master Of The Forests :* The Zombies :* The Circus :* Rockets * Fan-Produced Audio Drama :* Values * Fan-Produced Comics :* Going Home :* Return To Yesterday Notes * Many sources list “The Liberator” as "Unaired" in the United States during the series’ initial run - possibly because it was pre-empted in one or two major markets - though it did run in Europe. However, it was shown in some areas, as both CBS-TV records and Neilsen Ratings data testify.'Broadcast History' at escapefromtomorrow.com It was eventually syndicated on Sci-Fi Channel and other networks in the 1990s. * In 1981, ten episodes were re-edited into five telefilms, with newly produced framing sequences featuring Roddy McDowall as Galen. These framing sequences were not included on the TV series’ DVD release, but can be viewed online at Kassidy Rae’s Planet of the Apes: The Television Series website.Galen's Last Appearance * Rod Serling wrote two pilot scripts (“Episode One” and “Episode Two”) that greatly differed from the aired versions. * The scripts to “Hostage” and “A Fallen God” are available online at Hunter Goatley’s Planet of the Apes Archive; synopsis of the other four unfilmed episodes were included in the series bible, reprinted in Simian Scrolls issue #12. * Star of three Apes movies, Kim Hunter was also asked to take part in the Planet of the Apes TV series, but "Nobody told me what the role was or might be. They just asked me if I would join them and I said no, thank you. And as I have said many times since, I loved making the Apes films but thank God I was killed in the third so I wouldn't have to go through that make-up process again!"'Simian Scrolls #4' at Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive * An animated version of this series was briefly discussed in the 1980s but never produced; a concept drawing by artist Jack Kirby, reproduced in The Jack Kirby Collector and later in Simian Scrolls #6, shows that it would have featured Virdon and Burke, along with a female “blonde companion of astronauts” and Toomak, a “human slave boy.” (Information taken from Timeline of the Planet of the Apes: The Definitive Chronology, by Rich Handley.) Behind the Scenes A Planet of the Apes television series was planned by producer Arthur P. Jacobs as early as 1971 - around the time of Escape from the Planet of the Apes - according to the 1998 documentary Behind the Planet of the Apes. The continued success of the films delayed making any TV series until after the fifth movie. An undated concept for a TV series was prepared. This concept outlined two human astronaut characters - Alan Virdon and Stan Kovak - who crash-land on the Planet of Apes while on a routine reconnaissance flight. Their personalities are already set out as they will be seen in the filmed series. Their adversaries are Ursus the gorilla, who wants the astronauts killed, and Zaius who wants to question them and learn from them. Galen the chimpanzee is their only ape friend as they try to evade capture. The magnetic disc holding their flight information is already a central part of the plot, and the planet is described in some detail with three zones: the ape city where humans are servants and slaves, a rural zone where ape and human farmers live uneasily side-by-side, and a Forbidden Zone around the ancient cities inhabited by rebellious humans. Quite why they wanted to re-introduce Ursus and Zaius, who's deaths had already been shown in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, is unclear, given that at this point the project was still controlled by Arthur P. Jacobs, who was careful to maintain a certain amount of continuity through the movie series (though not without many slip-ups). At some point, Rod Serling wrote a two-part script for episodes one and two of a TV series. His script was a peculiar mixture of the TV concept, a very early script written by him for the original movie, and the plot of the second movie. It is significantly different to the filmed episode, although it does set up the series scenario in line with the concept, and some of the ideas were carried over into the script for the pilot episode, "Escape from Tomorrow", developed by writers Anthony Wilson and Art Wallace. The plot concerned Virdon and Kovak landing on a mysterious planet after a period of suspended animation (Kovak: "To age four weeks...while travelling almost six years...and to know that nothing we've left behind will be the same when we return...if we return"). The reason - to rescue or find a crew of missing astronauts (Virdon: "Somewhere - out there - are Taylor, Thomas, LaFever and Bengsten - or their remains. We're going to find them...or finish an epitaph for them." Here, the story begins to mimic that of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, while the names recall earlier ideas of Serling's: George Taylor is, of course from the first movie; John Thomas was the name of the central character in Serling's early draft script, subsequently changed to Taylor; Paul LaFever was also in the early script, the character later became John Landon - the other astronauts on that mission were Dodge and the deceased Blake). The continuity of this story is somewhat confusing, it's almost a sequal to his first movie script, which was revised heavily for the movie, rather than tying-in with any of the actual filmed movies. The earliest dated TV script is for an unfilmed episode 'A Fallen God', from March 2, 1973. This and other early TV scripts follow on from the concept and feature Virdon, Kovak (or 'Ed Rowak') and Galen evading Ursus (or 'Urso') and Zaius, before Wallace's final re-write for episode one (July 1974) introduced the names 'Burke' and 'Urko' along with a new story. While Serling's contribution hasn't been acknowledged (unlike his work on the movie script), the concept of a previous astronaut crew survived into Wallace's script (Zaius: "More than ten years ago, another such ship landed. Humans. They said they were from Earth...but from another time period...long ago."). This plot device isn't explored further in the series, although it might have been had the series continued. Another plot device introduced by Wallace was the hint that there may be more, unconnected, advanced humans on the planet (Virdon: "Maybe...just maybe...the humans that built that grenade are still on Earth, and they have the knowledge to..." Burke: "to do what? Build a spaceship? And a computer?" Virdon: "Where did you get this grenade?" Zaius: "A human. He didn't live long enough to tell me his name. That human was caught trying to sneak into the city. And yes, I had him killed."). Again, this may have had some significance as the series developed.Hunter's Planet of the Apes Scripts Archive With the release of 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Jacobs and the studio agreed that the film franchise had run its course but the Planet of the Apes concept still had life in it. It would find a home on the small screen as a weekly series. When Jacobs suddenly died in June 1973 at age 51, the project went to 20th Century Fox. Casting director Marvin Paige was invloved in a stalled attempt to create a series in 1973: "I was out at Fox the previous year - they'd made a deal with me to cast pilots and a couple of 'Movies of the Week'. As a matter of fact, we started on a presentation for 'Planet of the Apes' at this point. And then the network, I think, had to decide whether they were going to put 'Planet of the Apes' on that season or 'Perry Mason' New Adventures of Perry Mason' - September 1973 to January 1974. They decided to go ahead with Perry Mason, which unfortunately didn't make it. Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it."'Planet of the Apes' UK Issue #29 at Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive The spur for finally starting production of a TV show was when the CBS network bought the TV rights to the first two Apes films, showed them on American screens and - WOW! In response, 20th Century Fox began showing all five Apes films in back-to-back "Go Ape!" film marathons in movie theatres. The next step, naturally, was a TV series, and CBS bought the TV rights and started production, filming at Fox studios and ranch, produced by Herbert Hirschman and Stan Hough, and starring Roddy McDowall as the renegade chimpanzee, Galen - one of the few Apes in this strange, alien world of the future willing to befriend the two astronauts from out of Earth's past - Ron Harper as astronaut Alan Virdon, and James Naughton as his companion in nightmare, astronaut Peter Burke.'Planet of the Apes' Sunday Observer Special (Australia, 1 June 1975) Marvin Paige explained the process of casting the stars of the new show: "There are more gorillas on the series really, than chimps, the gorillas being the military, the police, the heavies. One pre-requisite - we must have brown-eyed, not blue-eyed, apes and chimps. The chimps run between 5'7" and 5'8", that area or a little smaller. The orangutans, which are the council members, are about 5'10" and the gorillas about 5'11" or 6'1". We'll even stretch to 6'2" if we have to, because the actors portraying those things have to, in those characters, develop almost a slouch. There's a specific walk, and I run a piece of film for the actors we hire. Now, as far as the chimp, we had begun looking at actors for that role, never feeling that Roddy would be interested at that point or that a feasible situation could be worked out. Then Roddy, kind of through his representatives, approached us and indicated that he would certainly be interested in discussing the situation, and we finally did get it all worked out. We tested something like 53 actors for the astronauts, for the two main roles. Then for Ron Harper, we flew him in to test (from New York City). This was on a Thursday; he flew back on Friday; was getting married on Saturday and going to Ireland for his honeymoon. The network felt there were certain things in the test that they hadn't captured and wanted to retest him with other people and try him with Jim Naughton to see how that combination was. So I had to get hold of him - I think I was up half the night tracking down Harper's agent in New York, tracing him in Ireland, getting everything coordinated and eventually having to bring him back from Ireland right in the middle of his honeymoon!"'Planet of the Apes' UK Issue #29 at Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive A reporter from Marvel visited the set of the TV show in the weeks before it went on-air and noted, perhaps prompted by official publicity, that "Humans are now inferior inhabitants of the inner zone (the centre of the ape world) and their jobs are those of minor clerks, servants, labourers and slaves. An occasional human is elevated to the rank of an overseer, but they are subject to the ape civilization and exist at its whim. Unlike the original 'Apes' motion pictures, some of the humans in the series have powers of speech and the intellectual capacity of apes. The change was made to allow more plot flexibility and to provide the possibility of roles for guest stars. The most amazing off-camera feature is the daily creation of 'appliances' to the heads and faces of the apes. Dan Striepeke, one of the creators of the 'Apes' appliances, has a crew of a dozen makeup artists working under him. Their art practice is energy-draining in that it takes three full hours to apply the features. At midday, actors wearing makeup appliances cannot eat solid foods, but must partake of liquids by means of straws. During days when the heat rises to 110 degrees on location some actors can lose as much as ten pounds in a single day!"'Planet of the Apes' UK Issue #13 at Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive Even as CBS was preparing it's weekly TV series, Marvel Comics was publishing apes comic books, Topps was selling apes chewing gum, and dozens of other companies were flooding the market with everything from apes cookware to puzzles to beachballs. Twentieth Century Fox, which was cheerfully controlling this monstrous merchandise campaign, estimated that Americans would spend over a $100,000,000 in the grips of monkey madness.[http://pota.goatley.com/misc/smash/ Smash (1974)]'' Writers Anthony Wilson and Art Wallace developed the series, and the production team included producer Stan Hough, executive producer Herbert Hirschman, executive story consultant Howard Dimsdale and story consultants Ken Spears and Joe Ruby - plus a roster of veteran directors. Chronologically, the story was set between Battle for the Planet of the Apes and the depressing apocalypse of the first two films - allowing the series to adopt a jaunty, adventurish tone and to feature speaking humans. The series didn't dive into the Apes universe in any sort of detail; our heroes simply moved from village to village. Where the movies adopted a pessimistic view of humanity, the TV series was largely about how Virdon and Burke were smarter than (and morally superior to) the stupid, backwards apes, using their 20th-century technological know-how and spreading hope among the simple humans populating the countryside. The show premiered on Friday, September 13, 1974, on CBS. Although it attracted a following with young viewers, it was unable to compete for the older audience against ratings winners Sanford and Son and Chico and the Man on NBC. By December, Planet of the Apes was cancelled after fourteen episodes had been filmed. It became clear to Ron Harper (and to all the crew) fairly soon into production that the show was not going to be the runaway success that they had anticipated: "I had seen the writing on the wall. About three or four episodes before the end, I'd realized, "This is a boring series." CBS wanted more action in 'Planet of the Apes'. After a while, in every episode, one of us, Roddy, James or me, would get captured by the apes and the other two would rescue him. We took turns. Whose turn is it to get captured?, is it Roddy, me or Jim? And I thought, "This is getting to be monotonous." This was a science fiction thing and we could have gone anywhere in the world we wanted with our imaginations. I think, had the series gone on, as they intended it to, they may have brought in some more imaginative writers. Everybody expected it to be a big hit, everybody expected it to go five years, and then..."I Talked with a Zombie: Interviews With 23 Veterans of Horror and Sci-Fi by Tom Weaver (2008) Trivia * Planet of the Apes aired on CBS on Friday nights from 20:00 - 21:00, between 13th September and 20th December 1974. * In the UK the series was broadcast on ITV (Granada Region) on Sundays from 19:25 - 20:25, between 13th October 1974 and 19th January 1975 (with the exception of 'Escape From Tomorrow', which was aired from 19:55 - 20:55). 'Broadcast History' at escapefromtomorrow.com External links * Kassidy Rae's Planet of the Apes: The Television Series Website * Planet of the Apes (1974) article at Wikipedia * Planet of the Apes (1974) at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) * Planet of the Apes (1974) at TV.com * Hunter's Planet of the Apes Scripts Archive * [http://www.beegeesfever.com/give_a_show/main/picture_show/planet_apes/ Chad Valley Picture Show Planet of the Apes (1975)] References ---- Category:Planet of the Apes (TV Series)